Desmond laughed.  “Well, it is rather a nuisance; and you see Conway, the ashes have got so ground up in the place that the doctor is afraid it will be a black scar.  O’Connor chaffs me about it, but I am sure he wouldn’t like it himself.”

“Why, my dear fellow, it’s a most honorable wound.  You will be able to dilate upon the desperate capture of the noted ruffian the Red Captain, and how you and that noble officer Captain O’Connor dashed alone into the cavern, tenanted by thirteen notorious desperadoes.  Why, properly worked up, man, there is no end of capital to be made out of it.  I foresee that I shall be quite a hero at tea-fights.  A battle is nothing to such an affair as this.  Of course it will not be necessary to say that you shot down into the middle of them like a sack of wheat because you could not help it.  You must speak of your reckless spring of twenty feet from that upper passage into the middle of them.  Why, properly told, the dangers of the breach at Badajos would pale before it.”

“I am glad to see that you are in such high spirits,” Ralph said when the laugh had subsided.  “There’s no fear of your being lame after it, I hope?”

“No, Dr. Doran says it is a clean snap of the bone, and it will, he thinks, mend all right; and as Macpherson, who has been examining it, says the same, I hope it is all right.  It is very good of the colonel sending the doctor over to us; but I think Doran understands his business well, and has made a capital job of both of us.”

“How is Rawlinson going on?”

“Oh, I think he will do very well,” the surgeon said.  “Of course he’s a little down in the mouth about himself.  It is not a pleasant prospect for a man to have to go about on two wooden legs all his life.  Still it’s been done in the service; and as the fight was a sharp one, and such an important capture was made, he will get his full pension, and I shall strongly recommend him for Chelsea Hospital if he likes to take it.  But he tells me he was by trade a carpenter before he enlisted, and I expect he would rather go down to live among his own people.  His wooden legs won’t prevent him earning a living at his trade; and as he is rather a good-looking fellow I dare say he won’t have much difficulty in getting a wife.  Maimed heroes are irresistible to the female mind.”

“That’s a comfort for you, Desmond, anyhow,” O’Connor laughed.  “That black patch on your forehead ought to add a thousand a year to your marketable value.”

The next morning Ralph marched with his detachment, and arrived at Cork without adventure.  Here he handed his prisoners over to the civil authorities of the jail, and then marched up to the barracks.  He at once reported himself to the colonel, who congratulated him warmly upon the success that had attended the capture, and upon his own conduct in the affair.

“I will not keep you now,” the colonel said, “for the mess-bugle sounded five minutes ago.  I shall see you again in the morning.”